News analysis

Toulouse killings

Death in the morning

CANDIDATES for France's upcoming presidential election suspended campaigning today after the massacre of three young Jewish schoolchildren, and one adult, in a religious school in Toulouse, in south-west France.

The four were shot dead early this morning by a man who arrived by motorcycle and fired indiscriminately as pupils were being dropped off at the Ozar Hatorah school. President Nicolas Sarkozy, who flew straight to Toulouse, called the attack a "national tragedy", and has called for a minute's silence in all French schools tomorrow.

He was accompanied to Toulouse by Richard Prasquier, head of the Representative Council of Jewish Organisations of France. French news reports say that the adult killed appears to have been Franco-Israeli; the Israeli ambassador to Paris was due in Toulouse this afternoon.

François Hollande, the Socialist presidential candidate and poll frontrunner, was also set to visit the school today. Campaign debates and television interviews planned for this evening have been cancelled.

The motivations of the gunman remain obscure. Anti-terrorist police have been sent from Paris to investigate the shootings, as well as the killing of three French soldiers last week. Two of them, both wearing uniforms, were shot dead at a cashpoint in nearby Montauban, also by a man who turned up on a motorcycle; a third was killed in Toulouse.

The Toulouse public prosecutor, Michel Valet, said today that "elements" existed that might connect the events. Mr Sarkozy said that he was "struck by the similarities". The three soldiers killed last week were Muslims of north African origin; a fourth soldier injured in one of the attacks was from the French Caribbean.

With little information to go on, there is much speculation about who is behind these killings, and why they took place. They could turn out to have been the work of a lone racist psychopath. But a wider political motivation is also possible.

The two soldiers murdered in Montauban belonged to the 17th parachute engineer regiment, which is present in Afghanistan as part of France's contribution to NATO's operation there. Over the years France has received various terrorist threats linked to its participation in the Afghanistan mission. Last week Gérard Longuet, the defence minister, said that he could not rule out a "collective and organised" attack on the soldiers.

According to Le Point, a news magazine, another hypothesis concerns three ex-soldiers with neo-Nazi ties purged from Montauban's 17th parachute regiment. The soldiers were dismissed in 2008 after they were photographed performing a Nazi salute in front of a swastika. The description of these men, says Le Point, “matches the slim information” that is known about the killer in these latest murders.* For now, however, all this is speculation.

Thousands of policemen have today been put on the case in Toulouse. And security has been reinforced at religious schools in the region while the killer remains at large.

* UPDATE March 20th Investigators confirmed last night that they are hunting the same man for all seven murders; Le Point is reporting today that the police have cleared the three former paratroopers with neo-Nazi links.

If he turns out to be Muslim, he will be a terrorist, probably with affliations to Al Qaeda.
If he turns out to be a Christian European, he will of course be a Neo-Nazi.
If he turns out to be Jewish or American Christian, he will have suffered some kind of inexplicable mental breakdown, brought on by some bad stuff happening in his life.

"The Toulouse public prosecutor, Michel Valet, said today that "elements" existed that might connect the events. Mr Sarkozy said that he was "struck by the similarities". The three soldiers killed last week were Muslims of north African origin; a fourth soldier injured in one of the attacks was from the French Caribbean."

"a little cheap of you to use her as a weapon with which to attack the EU."

Weapons with which to attack the regressive monstrosity of the "EU" can never be cheap enough, imho. This incident is the latest of so many howlers by the "EU".

This woman is paid over a quarter of a million euros per annum, more than any ELECTED leaders such as Obama, Sarkozy, Cameron etc. Ditto van Rompuy who is paid still more. We need not mention its assorted other overpaid public figures(let alone the thousands of invisible overpaid unelected functionaries acting as law-givers and policy makers in the EC), all of whom are either rejected by the democratic process in their own nations, or who have never faced an electorate.

The “EU” has also been meddling incompetently in Middle Eastern affairs without competence or authority for years, including North Africa.

We in Europe may as well regress to the sort of failed autarchy that we thought we had left behind with the Habsburgs with this model of anti-democracy known as the “EU”, whose interference in the prosperity of member nation states will inevitably cost lives (already has done in Greece), as well as the deterioration in European international relations that has resulted directly from “EU” meddling in Europe with its aborted political currency and insane regulations, all of which are to deteroriate further unrest without recourse to the safety valve of democracy.

What a big pity the death of these three children.
What a great and sad coward the one who did it. No matter white, black or whatever.
Today I'm a bit more depressed than yesterday. Today I hate the world a bit more. Thanks goodness that I'm not a paranoid; only a normal man trying to make a living with my family in peace.
My condolences for the three families.
Regards

I am a young non western male living in Rotterdam. I travel in the netherlands, and across europe. The liberal multiculturalism which is imtroduced in europe has failed. It was a great idea in the liberal sixties, I look at those people and their expectations, they were so positive, without knowing what a multicultural society means. As a non-muslim and non-arab fleeing the middle-east (with my parents because ethnic and religious problems) I have never understand the left positivism. And it looks that history always repeats itself (this time with the help of lefties, who created the multicultural problem). But the last group to blame are the europeans themself. In the Netherlands the largest racist (facist group) are made out of the gray wolfs (turkish natonalists). They are larger than the neo-nazi groups here. Their are a lot of problems with them and kurds. If you type in (in google) ''molukkers marokkanen culemborg'', you will see that the dutch army is present in a city called culemborg because of tensions between north-africans and east asians. And of course their are also problems between the dutch (white europeans) and others, but to be true, in general the rest of the world is more racist than european-whites. (look at china, they claim their are no non-chinese living their (tibetians and uygurs)). I am fair, as someone who has been discriminated (largly by muslims, who tend to be dark, but also by dutchmen who tend ot by white) I am myself also prejudice. But then again, my family has experiend that multiculturism just doesnt work. Not hunderds years ago (in alexandria, egypt and other places in the middle-east) and not now, in the Netherlands, australia, japan (yes i have a uncle their) and etc. Between under the youth in the netherlands (minus 25 years-old) PVV of Geert Wilders is in the top two, and I cant blame them.
Solutions. created everywhere in the world (in countries) safeheavens for people who dont want multi-cultural, -ethnic, religious cities and let people than trade (economic) with each other, let the choice to people! And everyone will be happy.

Ashton of the "EU organisation" managed a hiccup of grotesque magnitude:

"When we see what is happening in Gaza, in different parts of the world - we remember young people and children who lose their lives …." deliberately reinforcing the impression of a linkage between Israeli military operations in Gaza and the Toulouse murders.

You can disfavor multiculturalism without necessarily killing everyone you don't like.
These murders are clearly the work of some demented moron.
Your litany of tedious commonplaces doesn't teach us anything.
It's BS.

I support the Israeli right to self-defence. And who is telling you that one Jewish life is worth more or less than any other?

Perhaps, if you are an European, you should look at the reasons why the Jews went to Palestine instead of moralising. A succession of totalitarian European regimes bear a heavy responsibility for that, which is all the more reason why individual European nations should tread carefully when addressing the issues in the Middle East and why a new autocratic European regime has no authority. The fictitious "union", the illegitimate "EU", has no mandate to speak on behalf of the nations of Europe, and in trying to do so has inflamed the situation.

Oh, one of the Arab posters on this thread has already dropped mentioning of MILITARY operations in which children of Gaza die. In his parlance, it's about Israelis killing Palestinian children, as if they drive to Gazan schools and indiscriminately shoot at children.
This never happened, and won't.
But we all know that Arab parents pick a fight with Israelis and then happily shove their own children into the harm's way.
Or send them to become suicide bombers.
Or set launch pads for their rockets at schools full of their own children.
And after that lie to the whole world how dearly they love their children.

Perhaps not PC, but I do not consider it racist for a native to resent foreigners flooding into his country and trying to change his country into a version of their old country. Seems to me you immigrate, you assimilate or you emigrate, back to where you came from.

While you are not supporting him or her, Ashton's announcement has of course been taken as the direct comparison of military operations by the defence force of a nation that does not take kindly to being bombarded by rockets, with an apparent act of attempted genocide. In doing so The "EU" is providing mitigation for a deranged killer.

You would expect more diplomatic skill from the representative of an organisation pretending to represent European taxpayers (and with such a ridiculous salary.)

So the killer is after all a Mohammedan, as suspected from the beginning.
Oh, but he killed also three Moslem soldiers... so what? There is no contradiction here: Arabs in the Holy Land habitually kill each other en masse (for instance, after Hamas took over Gaza), and the biggest killers of Moslems all over the world are by far Moslems themselves.
And of course in the home country of the murderer, Algeria, Islamists massacred hundreds of thousands of their fellow Moslems.
So it figured.

Timothy D. Naegele thinks that "Benjamin Netanyahu's reckless threats to attack Iran will spawn violence against Israelis and other innocent Jews worldwide".
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Tim,
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I wonder, have violence against Israelis and/or Jews ever happened worldwide before Benjamin Netanyahu's reckless threats to attack Iran?
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Or before Benjamin Netanyahu became Israel's prime minister?
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Or before Iran's nuclear ambitions?
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Or before Netanyahu was born?
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Or before Israel was reborn?
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How do you distinguish between innocent Jews and guilty Jews who deserve to be attacked for being Jews?